Crimson Tide
by lillianamae
Summary: Clarice is riddled with regret and abandoned by everything she struggled to uphold. Is there any hope of salvation for her?


Crimson Tide

A/N: I don't own anything- just mucking about in the garden, so to speak.

Clarice watched it. Red. She had never liked the color. Unfortunately, it was everywhere. She had to admit though; it went well with the black evening dress that she had on. The one he had given her. Her slashed wrists throbbed mercilessly, but it would end very soon.

Thoughts drifted uncontrollably through her head, and images from her FBI career and her dreams swamped her. Those things were long gone. They had left her to the wolves after the event in Chesapeake and forced her to resign. Oh, they had made it honorable to the public eye, saying that the trauma of being in the Cannibal's grasp had broken her emotionally and for the sake of her "fragility", she was being let go. Clarice had never been fragile, and some of the media didn't buy the lie, but three months after Chesapeake and a bare three weeks after her resignation, she had her first nervous breakdown.

She had been in the grocery store looking for something quick to make when a child began to kick the shelves next to her. The mother had promptly grabbed the boy.

"Don't be rude, Timothy. You know I can't stand it. Wait until we get home!" she hissed.

Clarice had felt the world spin around her and she heard a high-pitched wail. She was horrified when she realized that it was coming from her and that she couldn't stop. The word "rude" hissed through her ears over and over. She had managed to make herself stop by shoving her fist in her mouth and biting so hard that she drew blood. She ran from the store and smeared blood all over her car door when she tried to unlock it. When she came home, she had used an old field kit to stop the bleeding and a bottle of strong liquor to stop the words.

But her grip began to slip faster and soon she wasn't sleeping because He came to her in her dreams, and her father stood nearby with a sad look on his face and told her that she was damned. She was damned because she loved a monster. She never would have admitted it to anyone, but Dr. Lecter had been the only person to see her for who she was, not what she tried so hard to be. He was the most amazingly complex person she had ever known. He had challenged her, made her think outside the walls of ignorance, and had truly cared for her in a way that no one else had. And God help her that if in some deep part of her soul, she could accept the fact that he had killed those people. They had been horrible and corrupt, all of them, in one way or another. The first time the thought had hit her, she had thrown up in the sink.

She would never forget the kiss. She had wanted so badly to return it, but she couldn't and keep her precious morals intact. The memory of his lips on hers always gave her butterflies. He had also mutilated himself rather than hurt her. She knew he would rather die than be imprisoned again. She hadn't known that he would rather lose a piece of himself than hurt her. It was too late now. She had wronged him, had betrayed him, and now he was gone. She could never tell him that she was sorry, but she knew that news of what had happened to her would reach him. She had left an ad in the paper that they used to use. It had read "Deep roller, indeed. I go in the final plunge of regret." Maybe he would guess what she really meant.

Clarice was alone. Her heroes dead, her ideals ground to dust, and the only caring soul left she had driven away out of stupidity and cowardice. Soon, it wouldn't matter. Soon, the inner voices would stop.

The red warmth started to seep through the towels around her wrists and warm her body. It was cold and she was sleepy. It was almost over. Her eyes fluttered shut and she started to dream, or hallucinate, more likely.

There was the sound of her front door crashing open and steps pounding on her stairs. The door to her bedroom flew open and a man in a trench coat and a black hat barged into the room. He stopped short and stared at her, but she couldn't see his face past the brim of his hat.

"Clarice…." The voice was metallic, rolling with power, and Clarice sobbed and struggled to sit up.

"Dr. Lecter…god…" she gasped out. She should have been terrified. A serial killer was in her room, looking at her, and she had not so much as a kitchen knife to defend herself. She should have been afraid, but instead an overwhelming sense of relief washed through her. She would be able to tell him in person.

He strode towards her, sweeping off his hat as he came. The maroon eyes were blazing and his face was pale beneath a light tan. He grasped her shoulders and put her back against the pillows. She was too weak to object. He held her arms and unwrapped the towels around her wrists in a quick, professional way. She noticed that his thumb was on his hand, not cut off as she had seen it at the house. Someone must have fixed it for him. There was only a thin scar that showed where he had maimed himself. When he saw the wounds for what they were, he let out a soft breath of displeasure.

"I suppose I should be glad that it wasn't poison, but you are too thorough for your own good." He said calmly. He reached for the sodden towels and began to wrap them so tightly around her wrists that she could barely feel the cuts.

"Don't…I deserve it…" gasped Clarice.

"That is perhaps the single most ignorant thing I have heard from anyone in my life. Are you going to give me an equally ignorant reason?" His eyes bore through her as he finished with the towels. He started to pull the bed quilt up around her, kind of like a cocoon.

"Betrayed you…. I hurt you…never said I was sorry." It was hard for her to focus. She was really light headed.

For the first time she could remember, absolute shock crossed his face. His jaw was slack and his eyes lost that penetrating quality. For an instant, he looked much younger…almost naïve.

"You did this because you betrayed me? Not because the FBI left you? Not because they tore your morals down in pieces?" he whispered in disbelief. He reached out and smoothed the loose hair away from her face, his fingers barely brushing her skin.

Clarice closed her eyes and relished the warmth of his fingers. She found her voice and looked at him with tears still coming from her eyes. "Right about FBI…. I ruined it…. Never told you that I cared…about you."

Lecter gathered her in his arms and held her close to him, wrapped in the blankets. He looked at her with eyes that were full of something that she couldn't name.

"I am taking you with me, my dear. I hope you know how much trouble you are in."

Clarice smiled and tried to come back with a witty remark, but the world faded out.


End file.
